I've never met a femme-presenting¹ person who didn't have a sexual harassment/assault story.
Most have one from within the past week.
My most recent harassment was yesterday (but I haven't really left the house yet today, so there's still time).
My first sexual assault was at ~13².
¹ InB4 some guy hops in to remind us all that men get SA'd too
² that I remember
@damonology @alice I'm glad to hear it stopped for you on T but as a transmasc genderqueer person who cannot medically transition due to health reasons this isn't the case for me.
So yes, men get SA'd too, especially trans men/mascs who cannot transition. Idk op that inb4 was kind of crappy.
@ghostprince
My reading of the "inb4" is more to do with the fact that whenever someone is talking about the disproportionate amount of sexual harassment/assault/etc that femme presenting folks experience, there's often a comment about how "men experience it too, therefore..."
That sort of comment often proceeds to invalidate, diminish, or even shame the OP for relaying their experience instead of using it as a basis for solidarity.
The proportion is the same, under-reported on men's side due to societal stigma.
Is men going "hey, we experience this too" not also a call for solidarity? Why is this call being ignored? Because a specific class of men decided to run rampant with power, we should ignore those pleas for community?
@ghostprince It is absolutely not the same proportion. Under-reporting happens all around, for one. From all reliable studies, though, the proportion is heavily, heavily one-sided.
43.6% of women have experienced some form of "contact sexual violence". Half that for men. When it comes to completed or attempted rape, specifically, it's 21.3% of women and only 2.6% of men.
(Note: I'm a little confused about how a man can be "made to penetrate" someone, but that not be rape? That sounds like textbook rape. But even if we use that number, which is 7.1%, that is 1/3 of the rate women experience rape.)
(Note #2: for both "rape" and "made to penetrate", those numbers include both "completed" and "attempted".)
https://www.nsvrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/2015data-brief508.pdf
The proportion's not the same, and it's not even close.
Every instance is a tragedy! But let's have an accurate picture of the problem.
@Azuaron Thank you for these statistics! They are very helpful.
I am still of the opinion numbers skew way higher than expected due to just how many cishet men don't even realize they've been raped, but it's good to have a baseline to refer to. I'd like my arguments to be able to stand on two feet, so thank you for your correction!
(also, iirc once we include trans men + mascs into the mix the numbers go up quite a bit...but a lot are categorized as women)
@h3mmy @ghostprince @damonology @alice and let's be real, the same mechanism of patriarchy is at play when it happens to men. The assumption that they're all meant to be dominant sex machines and therefore *couldn't* say no and "are you even a real man if you didn't want it?" rhetoric. Patriarchy is more misandrist than any radfem.
When they fail to address the "why" it becomes crystal clear that it's a silencing tactic to recenter men.
@ghostprince non-femme-presenting folx do get assaulted and harassed. I used the term "femme-presenting" because that's who I was talking to (I'm not a woman).
I added the InB4 because every time I talk about sexual harassment, feminist topics, or just about anything that can be interpreted as calling out men, I get (usually white) cishet men derailing the replies to tell everyone that they have problems too.
Also, I'm sorry you're unable to medically transition (assuming you phrased it that way because you would like to); everybody should have the available options (and rights) to present as they feel fits them.
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